In the 1700's Hannover (now
spelled "Hanover") was an independent state in the northwest portion of what
would eventually become the nation of Germany. It was from here that Cord Heinrich
Sprengeler and his family departed for the New World. Traveling overland to the Port
of Bremen, they sailed on the Ship George, arriving in New York on August 6, 1856
. The ship's Passenger Manifest listed "Heinz Springler" as a
shoemaker, but at some point Cord Sprengeler made the decision to become a Lutheran
minister. Settling briefly near Hamburg, Minnesota, the family soon began an odyssey
that would take them to the Fort Wayne Lutheran Seminary in Indiana, then to Cord's first
ministerial assignment in Ontario, Canada, and finally back to Minnesota where the Rev.
Sprengeler organized the Trinity Lutheran Congregation in Waconia in 1865. From those
beginnings each generation of Sprengeler's provided its share of called workers to
Lutheran flocks in the western United States.

NOTE: Of the three
known Sprengeler children, the oldest son Casten Heinrich was the
only one to remain in Hannover rather than emigrating to America. Some of
Casten's
descendants remain in the present-day German State of Hanover in
or
near Walsrode.

NOTE: John Kasten Sprengeler, Cord's younger brother, emigrated to America two
years
before Cord and his
family. John settled first in Illinois, but by 1860 he and his family
were in Benton Township
in Carver County, Minnesota